WOMEN'S RIGHTS DECLARATIONS AND CONVENTION RESOLUTIONS:
FROM THE WESLEYAN CHAPEL (1848) TO INDEPENDENCE HALL (1876)



NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION RESOLUTIONS, WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 1869.

RESOLVED, That governments among men have hitherto signally failed, their history being but a series of revolution, bloodshed, and desolation.

RESOLVED, That a democracy based on a republicanism which proscribes and disfranchises one part of the citizens for their sex, and another for their color, is a contradiction in terms more offensive and harder to be borne than despotism itself ...

RESOLVED, That we demand, as the only assurance of national perpetuity and peace, as well as a measure of justice and right, that in the reconstruction of the Government suffrage shall be based on loyalty and intelligence, and nowhere be limited by odious distinctions on account of color, or sex.

RESOLVED, That we earnestly recommend to the friends of equal suffrage in all the States to call a convention ...and that committees be appointed to memorialize [legislatures] on the subject of suffrage alike impartial for men and women, and that as far as possible able and earnest women obtain a hearing ....

RESOLVED, That we denounce the proposition now pending in Congress to abolish the elective franchise in the District of Columbia, as it tends to make the disfranchisement of the 25,000 women of the District, and the lately enfranchised colored men perpetual.

RESOLVED, That in demanding the ballot for the disfranchised classes, we do not overlook the logical fact of the right to be voted for; and we know no reason why a colored man should be excluded from a seat in Congress, or any woman either ...

RESOLVED, That we demand of the Government, and of the public also, that women and colored people shall choose their own occupations, and be paid always equally with men for equal work.

RESOLVED, That a man's government is worse than a white man's government, because, in proportion as you increase the tyrants, you make the condition of the disfranchised class more hopeless and degraded.

RESOLVED, That as the partisan cry of a white man's government created the antagonism between the Irishman and the negro, culminating in those fearful riots in 1863, so the Republican cry of manhood suffrage creates the same antagonism between the negro and the woman, and must result, especially in the Southern States, in greater injustice toward woman.